Post # 24 Know your weeds.

I didn't always know that any plant could be considered a weed.  I thought that all weeds shared a similar physiology, evolution or life cycle which united them into an unpopular class of plants.  This is not true.  A weed is just a plant that, for some reason or another, people don't like: its perceived as useless, clogs underground plumbing, costs us money, mires our farm equipment, out competes more desirable plants, poisons our livestock, shades our crops, etc.  What's more, a weed in one location – intentionally killed, uprooted, and criticized – may be coveted elsewhere.  A plant's weediness really all depends on who you ask and what they want.

So ask an ecologists what they want and they will say 'diversity'.  Diversity is coveted by ecologists because, by definition, it suggests that many organisms are alive and well and it ensures an ecosystem's productivity and resilience.  Essentially, if extinction is the enemy, diversity is our greatest ally.  Ecologists, as well as anybody, know about weeds.  Here in the forests of northern Westchester there are weeds which threaten to decrease its diversity.  You may have heard them referred to as 'invasive species'.  Today's post is about one in particular: mile-a-minute Vine (Persicaria perfoliata).

A great poster showing all parts of the mile-a-minute vine.  Learn how to identify this weed in the field. 

        
Aptly named, this plant from Asia can grow, grow, grow over everything in its path.  With its little barbs (see picture) it can successfully hang onto the leaves, stems, and stalks of other plants as it rapidly grows up and over them.  Through research it has been shown to decrease local diversity...very weedy indeed.  Its an annual plant which means that it overwinters as a seed; the plant's vegetative parts do not persist for multiple years.  To stop this plant from spreading we need to halt its production of seeds.

Right now, the third week of August 2012, the mile-a-minute vine on the Armstrong Preserve are about to flower – I can see their swollen flower buds ready to erupt.  Remember back to elementary school biology – first come the flowers, then come the seeds.  In order to stop this plant from spreading we have to kill it before it makes seeds.  In other words, we have to kill it now.

Removing mile-a-minute vine is not necessarily difficult.  Using work gloves, you can easily pull the plant out of the ground.  BE SURE TO PULL OUT THE PLANT'S ROOTS.  If you break the stem, plant material left in the ground will begin to grow again.  It is inevitable to miss or break some vines, so get in the habit if revisiting sites a week or so after you pull vines, just to clean up any remaining plants.  After you pull the plant out of the ground you have to put it some place where it will desiccate and die (on a stone wall, driveway, etc.).    

A patch of densely growing mile-a-minute vine

If we miss our opportunity to kill this plant before it flowers and sets seed, it is likely to gain more traction in our area.  Patrol your property and spend an hour or two removing this ecological weed.  If you don't steward your own backyard, no one else will.  

For more information on mile-a-minute vine, see these on line resources:
http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/fact/pepe1.htm
http://www.hort.uconn.edu/mam/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persicaria_perfoliata

Post #23 Partnering with cover crops

What do you do when your feeling run down?  Some people need comfort food or a warm bath. Others sleep more or pop a packet of 'Emergen-C'.  As we mature, we all learn how to alleviate our own exhaustion.  We are not the only thing that gets run down and exhausted; we are a lot like soil in this respect.  As it turns out, our health and the health of soil are both influenced by the relative amounts of vitamins, carbon and water we contain.  When one of these gets thrown out of balance, bad things can happen.  To a gardener, exhausted soil looks like poor fruit production, sickly and discolored plants, and erosion.  The question then – and the topic of today's post – is: how do we recharge our soil?  How do we restore its vitality so that our crops thrive and be bountiful?  There are many soil conditioning methods, but one way in particular honors this month's thread of 'partnerships'.  Cover cropping.

A sick girl.  Like us, our soil can become run down and unhealthy.  Unhealthy soil needs attention and conditioning.  

Cover cropping is the act of planting beneficial plants in between cycles of crop plants.  Cover crops are diverse and plenty; rye, barley, various oats, clovers of all types, alfalfa, peas, buckwheat, reed canary grass, wheat, millet, soybean, vetch, kale, turnip and flax are just a few.  Each performs a unique job and benefits the soil in its own way.  For instance, rye is used through the winter to reduce erosion while barley 'scavenges' nitrogen from the soil (a good way to keep it from leaching or volatilizing).  Here is a great website that explains the various benefits of cover crops.  However your soil is acting run down, there is a cover crop that you can partner with to help it.          

This book is commonly referred to on the internet.  It is geared toward larger gardens and farms yet is still very informative and worth consulting if you are interested in managing your soil with cover crops.  

This spring and summer at the Armstrong House Education Center we used three cover crops to rejuvenate our garden's soil.

1) Peas (Pisum sativum).  Peas (along with the common clover, alfalfa and soybeans) are in the fabaceae or 'pea' family.  Like most plants in the fabaceae, peas are capable of taking gaseous nitrogen out of the atmosphere and converting it to a form of nitrogen usable by plants in a process called 'nitrogen fixation'.  You may have heard of this famous group of agricultural plants commonly referred to as 'nitrogen fixers' which actively increase the amount of nitrogen in the soil.  These plants provide us with an alternative to store bought, synthetic fertilizers, which have been shown to enter waterways and negatively effect aquatic ecosystems.

The flower of our pea cover crop.  Not only does this plant add nitrogen to the soil, it produces edible pea pods.  

2) Oats (Avena sativa).  These are called 'nurse' plants because they help the peas get established and grow.  The oats grow very quickly and suppress weeds while the relatively slower growing peas can develop and also act as scaffolding for the pea vines to grow upon.  After they die, the oats add carbon and nitrogen to the soil.  The peas and oats came together in this package.

3) Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum).   This fast growing plant suppresses weeds and is good at scavenging soil phosphorus and calcium, thereby keeping it from being washed away.  I have found that many insects are attracted to the white flowers of buckwheat.  On warm summer days I was amazed to see well over a dozen species of flying insects working the buckwheat flowers.  Among them were the Armstrong honeybees, which will be supported into the nectar-limited fall by our abundant beds of buckwheat.  We currently use buckwheat from Botanical Interests.

How to manage cover crops?
Each cover crop is managed differently.  How/where/when to sow crops varies among the plants, as does growing time and method for killing.  Generally, we sow cover crops from seed allow them to live for a preferred amount of time and then kill them.  The plants themselves are either left to decompose in the garden or composted.

At the Armstrong House garden, I allowed our peas, oats and buckwheat to flower before turning them into the soil (roughly 6 weeks of growing time).  To reduce the amount of bulky organic material I had to work in, I cut and composted the top halves and allowed the bottom halves to decompose in place for 2 weeks.  After these two weeks, I chopped up the remaining stems into very small pieces and literally raked them into the soil as I sowed a new crop of buckwheat.    

Future cover crops?
After the current cycle of buckwheat is ready to turn into the soil we will plant crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum) as a winter cover crop.  After germination, the clover will over winter in the garden and bloom in the early spring.  We choose this cover crop because it is a nitrogen fixer and a source of early spring nectar for our honeybees.

We will continue to use a variety of cover crops at the Armstrong House Education Center as we learn more about our soil's needs.  Think about what causes you to feel sick.  You make suffer from the flu, chicken pox, strep throat, arthritis, sciatica, or depression.  Each illness is remedied differently.  Likewise, in the future we may employ cover crops to perform different jobs such as erosion control, adding nutrients or organic material, honeybee forage or breaking up of compacted soil.  Check the blog or come to an event in our garden to see our current cover crop.
                

Post #19 What's in a place?

THE FOLLOWING IS AN OLD POST THAT WAS MISTAKENLY SHIFTED TO THIS NEW LOCATION.  ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON JULY 6TH.

Today's post will be the last in a thread about connecting with our surroundings.  Through the previous three posts I suggested that effective and long lasting land stewardship should be built on a foundation of intimacy with our environment.  Simply stated, how can we protect what we don't know?

The story of today's post starts way back when I was in college.  I was a student of biology sitting in an english class in northern California.  (I was enrolled at my home school in New Jersey, where I entered an exchange program which allowed me to travel to other state schools).  About this time, I considered myself rather 'eco-savvy'.  For example, I knew that the South American rain forests were being cut down, I knew that a diet of plants used less land and water resources than a diet of meats and I knew that wildlife all over the world was imperiled.  As it turns out, I knew nothing.

One day in English class we discussed 'place'.  I had used the word a million times before, but when my english professor said it, it seemed novel.  He said it in such a way that I knew it meant something bigger and different than I previously thought.  That day, he administered a simple test.  This was not a traditional test; the grade was private–only to be seen by the test taker– and was a personal assessment of their connection to their place.  While I don't have the exact test, I have reproduced a similar version below.  It is well worth your time to slow down, pour another cup of coffee and take this test.  Look at it this way, you can't possibly score worse than I did.

1. Trace the water you drink from precipitation to tap.

2. How many days until the moon is full (plus or minus a couple of days)?

3. Describe the soil around your home.

4. What were the primary subsistence techniques of the culture(s) that lived in your area before you?

5. Name five edible plants in your bioregion and their season(s) of availability.

6. From what direction do winter storms generally come in your region?

7. Where does your garbage go?

8. How long is the growing season where you live?

9. On what day of the year are the shadows shortest wear you live?

10. Name five trees in your area. Any of them Native? If you can't name them, describe them.

11. Name five resident and any migratory birds in your area.

12. What is the land use history by humans in your bioregion in the past century?

13. What primary geological event/process influenced the land forms where you live?

14. What species have become extinct in your area?

15. What are the major plant associations in your region?

16. From where you are reading this, point north.

17. What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom where you live?

18. What kind of rocks and minerals are found in your bioregion?

19. Were the stars out last night?

20. Name some beings (nonhuman) which share your place.

21. Do you celebrate the turning of the summer and winter solstice? If so, how do you celebrate?

22. How many people live next door to you? What are there names?

23. How much gasoline do you use a week, on the average?

24. What energy costs you the most money? What kind of energy is it?

25. What developed and potential energy resources are in your area?

26. What plans are there for massive development of energy or mineral resources in your bioregion?

27. What is the largest wilderness area in your bioregion?

One lunar cycle.  There was a time when I gave this very little thought.  After taking my first 'place' test, I began to take more notice of my surroundings, including the moon. 

I scored poorly on the test, but fell in love with the concept of 'place'.  I was surprised by how much I didn't know.  On what planet had I been living?  Had I not been paying any attention at all?  Suddenly, my immediate surroundings were unveiled.  I saw rays of sun, insects, the direction clouds came from.  I started tracking the phases of the moon and learning my plants.  I started noticing everything.  To me, 'place' was the trees planted on my college campus and the food service contracted to feed us college students.  'Place' was the human demographics of the area and the selections of beer at the town bar.  'Place' was everything!

After the test, I reoriented myself; my local environment became the most important.  The importance and allure of far-off places began to wane as I focused on the ecology and culture of my place.  Honestly, how could I care about the South American rain forest when I didn't even know the trees on my college campus?

An unveiling.  After taking the test, the complex nature of my place was unveiled.   

There is one simple reason why the concept of place was (and is) so appealing to me: it assumes that everything in a location is important, human or otherwise.  In other words, it acknowledges that an environment is shaped by all of its interrelated parts; culture and nature combine to make a place what it is.  For example, by understanding the place of northern Westchester County, we can begin to understand the current density of its white tailed deer herds.  The deer density is not simply a function of food, space and deer reproduction.  It is influenced by our ecological history, town politics, personal values, forest ecology, trends in landscaping, culture, etc.  By being tuned into our place–and all of the thousands of factors that interrelated to construct it–we can begin to understand our environmental problems for what they really are.      

Now back to this month's thread: knowing your surroundings.  To be effective land stewards, we must be aware of all the interconnected elements of our natural environment and how they interact.  What makes up your place?  How does the human environment affect the non-human environment, and vice versa?  What's going on around you?  ...where does your garbage go...?